It’s that time again. The fifth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is being rolled out today with the release of a Summary for Policymakers for the climate science portion of the report. (Sections on impacts of climate change and mitigation strategies will be released in the coming months.) Suspense about what the report would include has been somewhat deflated by leaks of early drafts, but the final wording is now available.

The group that prepared the report on the physical science behind climate change consisted of 259 climate scientists from 39 countries. (During a press conference, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri noted that in total, 831 scientists contributed to the various sections of the report, nearly 60 percent of whom were not involved with past reports.) The purpose of the report is to summarize what scientists have learned about climate change and to convey the level of scientific confidence in each conclusion. It cites 9,200 peer-reviewed papers, two-thirds of which were published after the release of the last IPCC report in 2007.

After being drafted by a number of scientists, the Summary for Policymakers was reviewed line-by-line by representatives of nations from around the world this week. Proposals for clarifying language then had to be approved by the scientists before the final draft was released.

Word on the street

Attention was drawn to a few elements of the leaked drafts of the reports, and we can now see how they appear in the finalized summary. First, the report does indeed express a higher confidence in the human causation of climate change than previous reports. Specifically, it states, “It is extremely likely [a phrase used to represent greater than 95 percent confidence] that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.”

Second, the range of best estimates for climate sensitivity (a measure of how much warming results from a given increase in greenhouse gases) did expand a bit, now spanning 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius for a doubling of CO2. The 2007 IPCC report gave a range of 2.0 to 4.5 degrees Celsius.

Also, estimates of sea level rise have increased from those in the last report, which were conservative due to uncertainty about the behavior of Greenland and Antarctica. The middle of the road scenarios for future emissions now project 0.32 to 0.62 meters of sea level rise by the last couple decades of the 21st century. The high emissions scenario would result in an estimated 0.52 to 0.98 meters by the year 2100.

The gist

As expected, the slowdown in atmospheric warming over the past few years was considered, although the cutoff date for including studies unfortunately excluded some recent, relevant ones. The report explains that the 2000s have seen some cooling influence from a slight lull in radiation from the Sun, a number of volcanic eruptions, and natural variability in the ocean (namely, a rash of cool La Niñas). It also offers a reminder that climate models “are not expected to reproduce the timing of internal variability." That is, no climate scientists hazard predictions about when El Niños, La Niñas, and volcanic eruptions will be on tap.

This iteration of the IPCC report used a new, simplified set of scenarios for future emissions. So although the graphs look a little different from past ones, the projections haven’t really changed. The middle-of-the-road scenarios would result in about 1 to 3 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, and the high-emissions scenario yields 2.6 to 4.8 degrees Celsius.

In order to keep warming below the oft-referenced target of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, the total amount of carbon humans have emitted cannot exceed about 800 gigatons, the report says. As of 2011, about 531 gigatons had been emitted. The two middle scenarios involve the emission of 595-1250 gigatons between now and the end of the century.

The report also emphasizes the need to consider the long-term ramifications of carbon dioxide emissions. “Depending on the scenario, about 15 to 40 percent of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years.”

Same as it ever was

To be clear, we’re sweating the details here. There’s nothing Earth-shattering in this report. The first IPCC report in 1990 laid out the big picture: our greenhouse gas emissions are changing the climate, and avoiding dangerous amounts of warming requires a rapid transition away from generating those emissions. The science has progressed a great deal since then, but the basic conclusions have not changed.

The IPCC reports are meant to provide governments (and everyone else) the best available information on which to base decisions about how to deal with the problem. Obviously, the reports haven’t guaranteed that those decisions get made.

The full text of the report will be released on Monday, after which we’ll be able to take a closer look at the (sweaty) details. On Saturday morning, from 7:00-9:00am EDT, a presentation and discussion of the report will be streamed live from Stockholm if you’d like to hear from some of the scientists who led the effort.

443 Reader Comments

Even if this is true, it begs the question of just how much we ought to sacrifice to prevent it. Do we all take major hits to our standard of living just so the climate, which changes all the time anyway, stays the same just a little longer.

You're arguing from a grave assumption that is not true.

"Do we all take major hits to our standard of living"... Who said we need to? The costs of mitigation have been considered by others in the past (Garnaut, Stern) and they've found that on the contrary, mitigation is actually cheaper and more cost-effective (i.e. of lesser impact to our standards of living) than doing nothing.

Wind power by some accounts is getting comparable to coal in costs, solar energy has plumetted in price. Who's to say we can't eventually make renewables far cheaper than fossil fuels?

We went from zero to putting a man on the moon in 10 years, we invented the atomic bomb in 5 years... Human's capacity to innovate and find solutions is amazing... This is a great opportunity to invest in new technologies and to remove dependencies on a limited and geopolitically complicated supply of fossil fuels (that's just a bonus in addition to saving us from the worst of climate change).

Then we shouldn't have to subsidize or mandate it right. It should happen through normal market forces, which I am perfectly OK with.

Agreed, then we can cut fossil fuel subsidies and stop spending defense money protecting fossil energy sources outside the US borders. We should also put the controls in place to reduce emissions from fossil fuel sources, or do you have a problem with the EPA too?

This dissembling about the "pause" in warming is shameful. First of all, if anything volcanic activity has been lower than normal over the last couple of decades. Since 2000, we've had at most 15 volcanic eruptions of VEI 4, nothing larger. Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 was VEI 6, which is the equivalent of 100 VEI 4 eruptions. Plus, larger eruptions like Pinatubo inject SO2 much higher in the stratosphere, where the effects are more widespread and longer-lasting.

Yep, you know more than them, right?

Quote:

Second, the prediction of the AGW alarmists has been that AGW would cause more El Nino events. So the reality that La Nina has dominated lately shows again the disconnect between AGW theory and the real world.

One press release of a study from 1998? Really? From that you determine The Prediction Of AGW?

Quote:

Third, it is nice to see some lip service payed to solar influence. However, this article doesn't mention the NASA forecast for solar cycle 25, which predicts a much lower cycle than the current Cycle 24 - and it is already the lowest level of solar activity in a century:

Third, it is nice to see some lip service payed to solar influence. However, this article doesn't mention the NASA forecast for solar cycle 25, which predicts a much lower cycle than the current Cycle 24 - and it is already the lowest level of solar activity in a century:

Regardless of what’s causing the Sun’s strange behavior, Hathaway and Penn, who are both in the solar prediction business, anticipate that Cycle 25, expected to peak in 2024, will be the weakest yet.

It is very likely we're at the beginning of a Solar Grand Minimum.

lol... The irony of relying on a prediction of the Sun (surely based on models, right?) is not lost on you?

If cycle 24 was the lowest level of solar activity in a century, then surely we should have seen a drop in temperatures (assuming the AGW alarmists are just trying to sell us something - not sure what yet, no-one's been able to explain that to me).... ??

Even if this is true, it begs the question of just how much we ought to sacrifice to prevent it. Do we all take major hits to our standard of living just so the climate, which changes all the time anyway, stays the same just a little longer.

You're arguing from a grave assumption that is not true.

"Do we all take major hits to our standard of living"... Who said we need to? The costs of mitigation have been considered by others in the past (Garnaut, Stern) and they've found that on the contrary, mitigation is actually cheaper and more cost-effective (i.e. of lesser impact to our standards of living) than doing nothing.

Wind power by some accounts is getting comparable to coal in costs, solar energy has plumetted in price. Who's to say we can't eventually make renewables far cheaper than fossil fuels?

We went from zero to putting a man on the moon in 10 years, we invented the atomic bomb in 5 years... Human's capacity to innovate and find solutions is amazing... This is a great opportunity to invest in new technologies and to remove dependencies on a limited and geopolitically complicated supply of fossil fuels (that's just a bonus in addition to saving us from the worst of climate change).

Then we shouldn't have to subsidize or mandate it right. It should happen through normal market forces, which I am perfectly OK with.

Except that the reason that wind and solar are finally becoming viable are because of government funded research and subsidies to get the companies off the ground. The established energy companies had absolutely no reason to ever research technology that would make their entire business model obsolete, and barriers to entry make it pretty much impossible that a free market solution would ever have made either technology happen. Certainly not before catastrophic damage had been done.

If it truly was cheaper and more efficient, established energy companies would have EVERY reason to want to pursue it. It would save them money and eliminate their dependance on unstable fuel prices.

The established energy companies profit greatly off of the unstable fuel prices. And in the short term, it isn't cheaper, it takes years potentially decades to reach a point where alternative fuels are efficient enough to compete with oil and gas, and companies are notoriously bad at thinking further ahead than next quarter.

Sadly you're right, nuclear probably is the best clean option at present, but nobody is interested in increasing their nuclear power because of their concerns about radiation. One option for this would be to push money into liquid fueled versions such as the liquid thorium reactors, which are supposedly both safer and more efficent, with less radioactive waste at the end too. These are a bit of a long shot though, despite being implemented in some countries there's still serious issues which we don't know if we can fix

Talking with a friend in the nuclear power industry it's not so much a public perception problem as it is a plain old cash flow one.

Nuclear power plants take years and years to design and build, on top of the billions it costs to construct them. Utility companies essentially have their profits regulated by state commissions, and due to the long time frame to recoup costs, it's hard for them to either have the cash on hand to sink into the construction, or borrow the billions and have it sit on their balance sheet for an eternity, driving their stock price down.

Even if this is true, it begs the question of just how much we ought to sacrifice to prevent it. Do we all take major hits to our standard of living just so the climate, which changes all the time anyway, stays the same just a little longer.

Improper use of 'begging the question' coupled with a straw man and red herring.

They’re still misleading the public. Everyone knows (well, many of us know) their models can’t simulate the natural processes that cause surface temperatures to warm over multidecadal timeframes, yet they insist on continuing this myth.

It appears the climate science community, under the direction of the IPCC, is still not interested in being honest within itself or with the public. What a shame!

The IPCC is actually prepared to dismiss the pause in warming as irrelevant ‘noise’ associated with natural variability. Under pressure, the IPCC now acknowledges the pause and admits that climate models failed to predict it. The IPCC has failed to convincingly explain the pause in terms of external radiative forcing from greenhouse gases, aerosols, solar or volcanic forcing; this leaves natural internal variability as the predominant candidate to explain the pause. If the IPCC attributes to the pause to natural internal variability, then this begs the question as to what extent the warming between 1975 and 2000 can also be explained by natural internal variability. Not to mention raising questions about the confidence that we should place in the IPCC’s projections of future climate change.

If everything you propose is true -- what's the end game? Why would the IPCC, and all climatologists the world over hope to gain from fooling us sheeple?

funding levels have increased in climate science by 20 times over the last 30 years.

no individual climate scientist is becoming a zillionaire, but there are many people who now have jobs that pay them decently, and these jobs also get them junkets across the planet to places like Oslo and Kyoto where they stay in nice (not gaudy, but nice) hotels and eat nice food and drink nice wine that they don't have to pay for because it all goes on the expense account.

Now imagine that you were doing all this world traveling on someone else's dime. What if it turned out that there was pretty much nothing interesting going on in your field of study, and that because of the complexity , there really was no practical way to do what you proposed you could do (predict the climate in 100 years).

You'd probably have to get another job. Maybe that job didn't afford you junkets and nice hotels and nice food. That would suck.

Oh yeah - that happened to me. Except i'm not in climate science. But i can't tell you how i miss the travel and the nice (not gawdy, but nice) hotels in exotic locales around the world.

It sucks. They don't want to lose that.

And if it turns out that its impossible to predict the climate in 100 years, then we can stop funding their research at astronomical levels, and go back to the levels it used to be 30 years ago.

Wow, just wow. So you're implying that thousands of scientists the world over are sociopaths, and that they are purposefully lying to the world, knowing that their lies will cause massive disruption in established businesses, just so they can take trips and drink nice wine.

Even if this is true, it begs the question of just how much we ought to sacrifice to prevent it. Do we all take major hits to our standard of living just so the climate, which changes all the time anyway, stays the same just a little longer.

Climate denialists are only interested in one thing; continuing to believe that they know the "truth", that it's all a giant conspiracy by the world governments to mobilise people, or tax people, or do something horrible. They want to feel special, that they, and their friends know the truth while the sheep continue to buy the official story.

I wouldn't say that I am personally a denialist, I would say it is likely overblown to incite fear and movement on the topics that need movement.

However my concern is that repeatedly throughout history when something needs to change for the collective benefit we do it. For example; California and Smog. When the issue came up they capped the amount of emissions. They took a concrete step that prevented further damage.

When CFC's began tearing a hole in the ozone layer we had an immediate worldwide ban on them. Now the Ozone layer is rebounding.

We didn't come up with cap and trade in either case. Why? because it doesn't solve any problem.

If the recommended action for climate change was 'cap and violators will be shot', or 'cap and non-compliant factories will be bulldozed at your expense' I would be on board. Cap and Trade is a tax that will not improve the situation. at all.

Get ready for a barrage of gleeful jeering from people who don't understand (or willfully ignore) the difference between "the rate of recent warming was lower than previously projected" and "the planet is cooling".

"The report explains that the 2000s have seen some cooling influence from a slight lull in radiation from the Sun, a number of volcanic eruptions, and natural variability in the ocean (namely, a rash of cool La Niñas)"

I don't see how these three things can be considered together. The sun and volcanoes are external influences on the climate; it's obvious to anyone how they would affect the climate.

But ocean currents, ninas or ninos or whichever one, are part of, and driven by, the climate. It seems to me like it's saying the climate cooled a bit, because it got cooler.

How is it that an ocean current can be considered an external forcing on climate?

No one said anything about it being an external forcing. Consider ocean currents more like an internal energy sink. If some of the extra energy resulting from sources of AGW ends up trapped in the ocean rather than fully manifesting in surface temperature changes, its still in the system. That's different from saying AGW sources contributed less additional energy to the system than expected which is why the temps are lower than expected. If that were the case, you could rethink all the models for AGW.

If it truly was cheaper and more efficient, established energy companies would have EVERY reason to want to pursue it. It would save them money and eliminate their dependance on unstable fuel prices.

Some are very interested, but there's a huge challenge: meeting peak demand from variable sources. The electric company knows when demand will be highest, but it doesn't know when supply of sun and wind will be highest and even if it did, it doesn't have a way to store the energy.

Which is to say that better large-scale energy storage would make renewables more viable.

Xcel energy in Colorado did a Smart Grid trial in Boulder a few years ago. The big idea is to move to demand-based pricing and convert our vehicle fleet to electric while upgrading to smart appliances that preferentially use energy during cheap times. Your refrigerator doesn't need to run its defrost cycle at 2:00pm while businesses are using the most energy if delaying it a couple hours causes no harm. As electric cars become more popular their batteries could also provide enough aggregate storage of energy to meet the reduced peak demand. The full vision of the "Smart Garage" program that the Rocky Mountain Institute sponsors would 1) cut down peak usage and smooth out the demand curve with smart appliances and 2) give the utilities a place to store excess energy so they can buy it back from consumers (who stand to make a little money if they can afford the flexibility in range) and sell it to businesses.

The City of Boulder has kicked Xcel to the curb and is forming its own municipal utility and I'm not sure of the fate of Xcel's trial Smart Grid project. I imagine the infrastructure is still installed and functioning and Boulder will buy it from them or have it replaced.

Even if this is true, it begs the question of just how much we ought to sacrifice to prevent it. Do we all take major hits to our standard of living just so the climate, which changes all the time anyway, stays the same just a little longer.

Improper use of 'begging the question' coupled with a straw man and red herring.

Well done sir.

I wasn't aware I was in a formal debate professor. The question remains valid.

You invalidated the question by following it up with a straw man. In other words, your question was loaded with both barrels.

The answer to your question is that the cost of fossil fuels should include ALL externalities, otherwise they are getting a free ride by the free market. This fair accounting is all that is needed to balance the economics of fossil fuels vs. renewables/nuclear.

Climate denialists are only interested in one thing; continuing to believe that they know the "truth", that it's all a giant conspiracy by the world governments to mobilise people, or tax people, or do something horrible. They want to feel special, that they, and their friends know the truth while the sheep continue to buy the official story.

I wouldn't say that I am personally a denialist, I would say it is likely overblown to incite fear and movement on the topics that need movement.

However my concern is that repeatedly throughout history when something needs to change for the collective benefit we do it. For example; California and Smog. When the issue came up they capped the amount of emissions. They took a concrete step that prevented further damage.

When CFC's began tearing a hole in the ozone layer we had an immediate worldwide ban on them. Now the Ozone layer is rebounding.

We didn't come up with cap and trade in either case. Why? because it doesn't solve any problem.

If the recommended action for climate change was 'cap and violators will be shot', or 'cap and non-compliant factories will be bulldozed at your expense' I would be on board. Cap and Trade is a tax that will not improve the situation. at all.

How many of those things had giant well-moneyed interested fighting back and a sizeable contingent of our government believing that they were the ones who were right? Cap and Trade is an attempt to assuage concerns of artificial constraints by constraining the entire system while allowing the individuals in the system to trade (read: buy and sell) credits to where they are needed. The initial purchase could be seen as a tax, but then it acts like a stock, whose total supply decreases over time.

You think emission reduction standards, and replacing aerosols wasn't a huge pain in the ass for the giant moneyed companies involved? You think there isn't a Detroit push back whenever efficiency standards are raised?

Regardless of dwindling stock cap and trade wont fix the problem today, it wont fix it tomorrow, and it wont fix it next year. It will make some few people rich though.

Even if this is true, it begs the question of just how much we ought to sacrifice to prevent it. Do we all take major hits to our standard of living just so the climate, which changes all the time anyway, stays the same just a little longer.

Improper use of 'begging the question' coupled with a straw man and red herring.

Well done sir.

I wasn't aware I was in a formal debate professor. The question remains valid.

It's still a bad question: It assumes the only course of action is to take a major hit to our standard of living, rather than making thoughful strategic investments that actually create jobs and economic opportunity in many diverse areas: R&D of tech to reduce emissions, manufacture and distribution of that tech, infrastructure retooling to mitigate climate impacts, etc. Economies have done wonderful things with concrete goals before... why so gloomy?

"Do we all take major hits to our standard of living"... Who said we need to? The costs of mitigation have been considered by others in the past (Garnaut, Stern) and they've found that on the contrary, mitigation is actually cheaper and more cost-effective (i.e. of lesser impact to our standards of living) than doing nothing.

Wind power by some accounts is getting comparable to coal in costs, solar energy has plumetted in price. Who's to say we can't eventually make renewables far cheaper than fossil fuels?

We went from zero to putting a man on the moon in 10 years, we invented the atomic bomb in 5 years... Human's capacity to innovate and find solutions is amazing... This is a great opportunity to invest in new technologies and to remove dependencies on a limited and geopolitically complicated supply of fossil fuels (that's just a bonus in addition to saving us from the worst of climate change).

Then we shouldn't have to subsidize or mandate it right. It should happen through normal market forces, which I am perfectly OK with.

Except that the reason that wind and solar are finally becoming viable are because of government funded research and subsidies to get the companies off the ground. The established energy companies had absolutely no reason to ever research technology that would make their entire business model obsolete, and barriers to entry make it pretty much impossible that a free market solution would ever have made either technology happen. Certainly not before catastrophic damage had been done.

If it truly was cheaper and more efficient, established energy companies would have EVERY reason to want to pursue it. It would save them money and eliminate their dependance on unstable fuel prices.

The established energy companies profit greatly off of the unstable fuel prices. And in the short term, it isn't cheaper, it takes years potentially decades to reach a point where alternative fuels are efficient enough to compete with oil and gas, and companies are notoriously bad at thinking further ahead than next quarter.

Oil and coal companies can profit off of unstable fuel prices, but electricity companies do not nor do other end users who would gladly switch if their were a VIABLE alternative.

No one gets ahead if the alternative costs more and is forced on them.

Try googling "Enron" and see how well instability in the fuel markets worked out for them.

If it truly was cheaper and more efficient, established energy companies would have EVERY reason to want to pursue it. It would save them money and eliminate their dependance on unstable fuel prices.

If you had a trillion dollars of unrealised revenue sitting in the ground that you expected to extract over the next 50 years, what would it take for you to decide to forsake that and try something your company has never done before and has no expertise in?

History is littered with companies that failed to adapt to changing technology and business paradigms and got over-taken by new enterprises because they only saw the value in what they already knew and understood.

All that said, I suspect many energy companies ARE looking into renewables in a serious way (I know BP was, at least early last decade, not sure where they're at now).

Once someone cracks that break-even point on renewables, then market forces will rapidly solve our problem. We just have to get to that point. Government intervention has already reduced the cost of renewables significantly, people are researching it right now.. I'd argue we need more investment and more research, more start-ups being encouraged to try their hands at solving the business model, as our time is limited. Again, with great focus, we've shown ourselves more than capable of solving difficult problems.

"Do we all take major hits to our standard of living"... Who said we need to? The costs of mitigation have been considered by others in the past (Garnaut, Stern) and they've found that on the contrary, mitigation is actually cheaper and more cost-effective (i.e. of lesser impact to our standards of living) than doing nothing.

Wind power by some accounts is getting comparable to coal in costs, solar energy has plumetted in price. Who's to say we can't eventually make renewables far cheaper than fossil fuels?

We went from zero to putting a man on the moon in 10 years, we invented the atomic bomb in 5 years... Human's capacity to innovate and find solutions is amazing... This is a great opportunity to invest in new technologies and to remove dependencies on a limited and geopolitically complicated supply of fossil fuels (that's just a bonus in addition to saving us from the worst of climate change).

Just to play devil's advocate, Garnaut and Stern most certainly did not prove that doing nothing and mitigation is more expensive on a macro economic level than CO2 curbing now.

Their base assumption is just plain wrong, since they neglect the discounting effect of higher economic growth in a "burn baby, burn!" world. The compound interest of 2% more world wide economic growth over more than 100 years cannot be discounted and has an enormous effect on future costs. When betting on linear cost increases over time (due to mitigation) versus exponential income growth, I bet on maths winning.

The real question is this:What are the effects of an unmitigated "burn baby, burn!" economy in 50 years, 100 years, 150 years? Are the effects slow and creeping or sudden system changing bad? Can the effects be monetarized (if not, don't even bother listing them)?

Slow and creeping effects can be safely ignored over the course of a generation. Mankind will automagically adapt to that. It is the identification of tipping scale effects that should worry policy makers.

Are people mobile and industrious, able to respond to changing environments?

Are you seriously suggesting climate change is not a problem because we know how to make boats?

What? No because people can adapt to changing environments as we have throughout our history which includes a lot of climate change.

There are reasons to believe it may be more complicated now.

Mobility is easier and less risky then it ever has been, not to mention the pace of technological breakthroughs is mind numbing. To think we could produce as much food per acre as we do now even 50 years ago would have been mind blowing.

Moreover, we would have the same problem eventually anyway since the climate, even without the humans influence, is quite unstable.

Where are all 7 billion of us going to go? Or are you only counting North Americans as people? Or are you discounting the fact that a warmer climate means less food or changes to our staple foods?

The group that prepared the report on the physical science behind climate change consisted of 259 climate scientists from 39 countries. (During a press conference, IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri noted that in total, 831 scientists contributed to the various sections of the report, nearly 60 percent of whom were not involved with past reports.) The purpose of the report is to summarize what scientists have learned about climate change and to convey the level of scientific confidence in each conclusion. It cites 9,200 peer-reviewed papers, two-thirds of which were published after the release of the last IPCC report in 2007

And none of that overwhelming evidence of a lack of conspiracy and throughness of investigation will matter since the people arguing that this is bunk will use the "if those scientists were really so smart, why did they make a mistake about..." argument and then shove their fingers in their ears, start singing "LaLaLaLaLa" and shove their heads into the sand for good measure.

Meanwhile, the folk they elected into office will be busy trying to pass laws claiming Pi=3.14 (yes, I know - it's an urban legend, but look at how they are treating evolution in schools in the south right now...)

Sorry this climate change stuff would NEVER be approved if it was a drug.

95% PROBABILITY that they are making it up for their own profit.

Who is "they" in this situation? And let's play devil's advocate, what does it hurt us in the long run to invest in cleaner and more efficient technology? Worst case scenario, we put a lot less pollution into the air and water, and preserve our not endless supply of oil and gas.

The main point of my comment was two statements of facts followed by a question. Mandating alternative energy hurts our standard of living. The climate is always changing. Given these facts is it worth pursuing aggressive, involuntary alternative energy policy.

I agree let's target only the externality. Tax the pollution, but don't subsidize or mandate anything and let the chips fall where they may. Otherwise you have bullcrap like the catalytic converter being forced on people who beat the pollution other ways like Honda.

Personally I can agree with your last point, as picking winners isn't something government is good at. Taxing pollution might be enough on its own, as it encourages people to find innovative ways to generate the same energy without the (now expensive) pollution.

Using those taxes to fund broad research that may help find those innovations is something governments can do quite effectively. Many of the advances in solar cells have come out of government funded universities and research institutions.

You're definitely still offering us a strawman with this standard of living assumption. No-one is mandating we switch to 100% renewables, anyone with their eye on policy decisions knows that we need to transition over time. What we DO need though is increased action on pricing/regulating CO2 pollution and/or putting more research funding into finding cheaper solutions.

What would be great as a first step is to get over this obsessive need to deny the science by a significant proportion of people like yourself who believe that any steps to address this is going to "make them suffer" in some way. Wouldn't you rather be seen in history as the responsible one who saw a long-term threat and actually made an effort to mitigate it?

Are people mobile and industrious, able to respond to changing environments?

Are you seriously suggesting climate change is not a problem because we know how to make boats?

What? No because people can adapt to changing environments as we have throughout our history which includes a lot of climate change.

There are reasons to believe it may be more complicated now.

Mobility is easier and less risky then it ever has been, not to mention the pace of technological breakthroughs is mind numbing. To think we could produce as much food per acre as we do now even 50 years ago would have been mind blowing.

Moreover, we would have the same problem eventually anyway since the climate, even without the humans influence, is quite unstable.

How much do you think this movement by the human race will cost monetarily and in time and inconvenience? More or less than moving to non-fossil fuels? And what about the damage to our health and health of the Earth that burning fossil fuels cause? Can you not see the cognitive disconnect you're experiencing here?

This dissembling about the "pause" in warming is shameful. First of all, if anything volcanic activity has been lower than normal over the last couple of decades. Since 2000, we've had at most 15 volcanic eruptions of VEI 4, nothing larger. Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 was VEI 6, which is the equivalent of 100 VEI 4 eruptions. Plus, larger eruptions like Pinatubo inject SO2 much higher in the stratosphere, where the effects are more widespread and longer-lasting.

Second, the prediction of the AGW alarmists has been that AGW would cause more El Nino events. So the reality that La Nina has dominated lately shows again the disconnect between AGW theory and the real world.

Third, it is nice to see some lip service payed to solar influence. However, this article doesn't mention the NASA forecast for solar cycle 25, which predicts a much lower cycle than the current Cycle 24 - and it is already the lowest level of solar activity in a century: